


Learning to Understand

by LeDiz



Series: The 48: Farscape [1]
Category: Farscape
Genre: Crichton tries, Early in Canon, Gen, Humans Are Weird, Translation via parasite isn't perfect, Zhaan is patient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 08:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7501020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeDiz/pseuds/LeDiz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Crichton is not an idiot, but not all language is in the words themselves, and that makes translation difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to Understand

He hates looking like an idiot.

He always has – he’s always had what the IASA shrink called inadequacy issues; what DK called a need to be the centre of attention. Because he had the Great Jack Crichton as a role model, and who the hell could live up to that?

And he knows he’s not stupid. He got all As in high school. Except in art, but to hell with Impressionism anyway. He passed his _astrophysics_ _doctorate_ with flying colours. He speaks multiple languages fluently, and can get by in a lot more, including multiple dead and fictional languages! He is _not_ stupid.

But this is all… beyond him.

The – the spaceship, it’s alive. The mechanics, the chemicals, even the damn food, it’s all unrecognisable. The women are blue and the men have _tentacles_ , for Pete’s sake. And the tentacles don’t move, or have suckers, so he’s not even sure that’s what they should be called, they’re just…!

He’s having trouble dealing. Let alone learning.

He thought he could maybe find some common ground with the other woman – the Peacekeeper. Erin. No, Erin is wrong. It’s definitely an ash sound to start with, like the old Latin. And the ‘rin’ is too quick. Probably a ‘y’. So that makes it Aeryn. Jesus, he can’t even work out her name. And that’s probably the simplest thing about her.

He just wants to understand. Something. Anything. He wants to get through ten damn minutes without being confused.

But to do that, he’s going to first have to look like an idiot.

“What is… hazmada?”

Zhaan just continues gazing at him patiently, her eyes kind and gentle. He wishes he could get past the blue skin to see the wonderful woman he thinks she is, but it’s been two days and he still just sees blue.

“What is what, Crichton?” she asks finally, and he blinks, then swears, because he’s already screwed this up.

“Okay, what about nivonks?”

She blinks back, her mouth twitching into a frown, before her brow furrows and she looks away, apparently going back over the exchange in her head. Then she laughs, softly, and comes back to him. “You don’t know what nivonks are?”

He holds up a hand, closing his eyes as if he could cut off the embarrassment and teasing with a gesture. “I know! I get the concept. What I don’t get is… I mean… the word doesn’t _translate_ ,” he says, and reopens his eyes to look at her. “Your bugs. The microbes. The things you injected me with to make me understand you.”

“The translator microbes,” she prompts, and he jerks his head in a nod.

“Yeah, them. They don’t translate some words, so I figure either I got the crappy version, or those words don’t have an English equivalent,” he says, and tries not to snap. Zhaan isn’t really laughing at him, he’s pretty sure – just the situation. But it still feels like it, and he still hates it. “So I need a little help.”

“Of course,” she says, and shuffles closer, so their legs touch hip to knee. “Your frustration is understandable, Crichton. Having been injected with the translator microbes as children, it’s hard for us to remember, sometimes, what it is like to first receive them. And it suddenly occurs to me that you must not understand some of the culture surrounding their use.”

“Culture?” he repeats through gritted teeth.

She nods, looking at him from under her brow. “There are so many languages in the universe. Some are very complex; there are languages where communication is almost… an art form. Others are very simple – a single word for a single object. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” he says, thinking of hours spent understanding German and French pronouns, and then his quickly-abandoned attempts to understand Inuit and Indigenous Australian – there doesn’t need to be more than one word for ‘rain’, damn it. “Some languages include adjectives and feelings in what other people might think of as nouns. And then there’s the ones that encapsulate entire concepts. Schadenfreude, whatever.”

Zhaan’s brow furrows ever so slightly, before she quickly shakes her head and moves on. “Where possible, the translator microbes match things to your own language. When your language is more complex than the one you are listening to, this is quite simple. However, in reverse, it can be… difficult. For example, I can only assume Humanian—”

“Hu- no, no, I speak _English_ ,” he corrects with a laugh. “It’s like, one of seven hundred languages that humans speak.”

She stares at him for a second, her head bobbing slightly as she digests that information. “Well, even just the one must be quite a complex language, because I confess, Crichton, I often have no idea what you’re trying to say.”

He blinks, then smiles, feeling some of the tension leave his shoulders. “Really?”

“Yes. For example, that phrase you used just now, shoo-dun…”

“Schadenfreude,” he says, grinning. “It’s not English, it’s German. It means ‘pleasure derived from others’ pain’.”

She stills for a moment. “Humans have a word for such a thing?”

“Some of us,” he says, but his smile fades the longer she stares at him. He knows it’s probably just him being creeped out by the blue skin, but sometimes, Zhaan seems kind of dangerous. He’s not sure what it is, but it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He coughs and looks away. “So what you’re saying is that if the word you use doesn’t have a meaning in my language, the microbes won’t work.”

“Yes,” she says, and looks away for a moment before coming back to him. “It also occurs if you use a language that is not your own, so for example, if I were to use… Hynerian, you most likely would not understand. A more common example is the use of slang, which is using words in a manner they were never intended. Your use of the word ‘screw’ comes to mind.”

He raises his eyebrows, and she rotates her wrist in thought. “To me, you only screw a bolt. But you said ‘screw you’ to D’Argo earlier. Although it was clearly an insult, to be honest, the phrase makes little sense.”

She’s right, when he stops to think about it. Even though he knows what the slang means. He can understand how the slang ‘screwing’ came about, even if it makes for some interesting mental imagery… He pauses to consider the picture for a second before continuing the thought. But even when he swaps the word ‘screw’ for its less polite equivalent, grammatically it should be ‘screw yourself’ or ‘I’ll screw you’. And now he realises that, taken technically, saying it at all implies you want to screw the person you’re saying it to, and… He closes his eyes. “I’m gonna stop myself right there…”

Zhaan chuckles, probably guessing at his train of thought, but waits silently for him to recover. He grins back and follows her reasoning through. “But even if you don’t understand the actual words involved, people know when they’re being sworn at.”

“Indeed,” she says. “And so, over time, a language that exists between languages has evolved to compensate. Frell, hazmada, dren… _nivonks_ …”

They both chuckle, John a little harder than Zhaan because he’s suddenly remembered this is a priest and she’s using pretty foul language, even if he doesn’t understand the actual words. When he recovers, he considers that for a few seconds, his teeth pulling at his bottom lip in thought.

“So because ‘ass’ is actually a male donkey,” he says slowly, grinning again when the sentence makes Zhaan clench her eyes shut and laugh, “And ‘balls’ are… well, balls… and heck knows what a dick _actually_ is… nivonks does the job for all three words.”

“And probably a few others,” she says. “You may find it used to imply a person has courage, as well. For example, Crichton, I might say to you: do you have the nivonks to carry on, confused as you are, aboard a ship of escaped criminals?”

He grins, because apparently some things do translate. In response, he reaches over and takes her hand, squeezing it gently.

When she squeezes back, and pushes his shoulder with her own, he realises that non-verbal doesn’t need translation, and for the first time thinks… maybe he can learn to understand.

**Author's Note:**

> The 48 is a collection of unfinished fics I have saved on my harddrive. The Farscape ones aren't so much unfinished so much as just... pointless vignettes. I post them here in case anyone is interested.
> 
> Behold my explanation for the inconsistent translations!


End file.
